“Out of his mind” surgeon plans human head transplant, revival of frozen brain

They’re preposterous claims.

Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero will undertake the first human head transplant later this year in China, the doctor told German magazine Ooomin an article published Thursday. And, following that effort, he will revive a cryogenically frozen brain and transplant it into a donor body within the next three years.

The plans, completely disconnected from reality and the state of modern medicine, are at least in line with his previous outlandish goals and dubious animal research.

Canavero made headlines in the past few years by claiming that transplanting the whole head of a human onto a donor body is currently possible. A Russian man, suffering from a spinal muscular atrophy malady called Werdnig-Hoffmann Disease, even publicly volunteered for the procedure.

As proof that the transplant could work, Canavero published gruesome experiments in 2016, said to have repaired the severely injured spinal cords of mice, rats, and a dog. The experiments came complete with cringe-worthy video of recovering animals struggling to drag their limp bodies around. Yet, the study lacked controls, detailed methods, and data on the injuries and recoveries. Canavero claimed to perform a head transplant on a monkey but did not publish the experiment.

Experts decidedly consider his research on spinal cord repair, let alone whole head transplants, unconvincing. A medical ethicist dubbed Canavero “out of his mind” for sweeping past the currently insurmountable challenges of such feats. These include intricately repairing and reattaching thousands of delicate nerves and restoring function. Right now, doctors can’t even convince the immune system to accept far simpler transplants consistently. There’s also the completely unknown effects of such a transplant on the powerful human psyche.

Canavero is carrying on, undeterred it seems. In his Ooom interview, he not only glided through the idea of successfully transplanting a head, he made an even more absurd claim: that he would revive a cryogenically frozen brain and transplant it into a donor body. Canavero said he would obtain a preserved brain from Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company located in Scottsdale, Arizona, according to Gizmodo.

There is currently no way to revive and molecularly repair a frozen human brain. And such transplants haven’t even been attempted in animals. Thus, the surgical procedure is decades if not centuries away.

As Gizmodo also reports, Alcor said that Canavera hadn’t even contacted the company. It distanced itself from the doctor, as did other cryonics leaders, and noted that his efforts are not realistic or even a shared goal.

In a statement, the company said:

The Alcor Life Extension has had no contact with Dr. Canavero. It is not yet possible to revive human brains cryopreserved with present methods. Revival of today’s cryonics patients will require future repair by highly advanced future technology, such as molecular nanotechnology. Technology that is advanced enough to repair a cryopreserved brain would by its nature also be able to regrow new tissues, organs, and a healthy body for the revived person. Therefore Alcor does not expect body donations or transplants to ever be necessary for revival of cryonics patients. Until advanced tissue regeneration technology is developed, we wish Dr. Canavero well in his development of body transplant surgery for living patients today who might benefit.

...I mean, a TEDx presentation? Who even takes those seriously anymore.

It's too bad, I used to enjoy TED, but in recent times I can't stand them because they constantly let pseudoscience have the microphone. I realize there's supposed to be some distinction between TEDx crap and TED, but at the end of the day they are still lending their name to quackery.

I'm sure this guy is a raving loon. However, I'm not against the basic concepts of any it, assuming it is done as humanely as possible with good medical ethics and approaches, etc. There's no indication of that here.

The fact that the videos are cringe-worthy (I don't watch videos of animals or people suffering) only bother me because they were likely inhumanely done by a crazy person. Lots of experimental things that have value are yucky.

The brain transplant part is the craziest. I'm not remotely convinced that that will ever work.

Why are people pretending this guy is crazy? Research into this has been going on for well over half a century - look up some of the old Soviet animal experiments.

Yeah, and based on what we've learned in the past half century the notion of doing it successfully today is indeed crazy. We've been researching fusion for 50 years too. Some advances take a lot longer than that. It took at least 500 years to perfect blood transfusions, which are child's play compared to this.

One would expect them to figure out hand transplants, or foot transplants, or finger transplants before they would do a head transplant.

Expecting to be able to transplant a head onto a different body without figuring out how to do much simpler steps first is ludicrous. Honestly, a hand transplant would probably help a lot more people than a head transplant anyway.

Why are people pretending this guy is crazy? Research into this has been going on for well over half a century - look up some of the old Soviet animal experiments.

No, he's fine until you give him access to people. With rampant fascism in the world and real science denial, the whole scenario reminds me of what happens when you give loonies like Dr Josef Mengele the authorization to work on "inferior humans" (or in this case, frozen heads) without their consent.

What happens when the company goes out of business? Are all these brains considered "alive"? If so, then it seems unethical to pull the plug on the equipment.

Nobody is frozen alive, but only very shortly after death. So clinically speaking, the frozen bodies/heads/brains are dead. Legally speaking too: people often pay for their cryogenics by taking out a life insurance policy that the cryonics company is the beneficiary of.

Also, the payment of services includes the setting up of a trust that collects interest and dividends that is supposed to pay for your cryogenic freezing in perpetuity. Basically you're safe, and the company stays solvent, as long as the market doesn't crash.